README.md

ssb-db

A database of unforgeable append-only feeds, optimized for efficient replication for peer to peer protocols.

What does it do?

ssb-db provides tools for dealing with unforgeable append-only message
feeds. You can create a feed, post messages to that feed, verify a feed created by
someone else, stream messages to and from feeds, and more (see API).

"Unforgeable" means that only the owner of a feed can modify that feed, as
enforced by digital signing (see Security properties).
This property makes ssb-db useful for peer-to-peer applications. ssb-db also
makes it easy to encrypt messages.

Example

In this example, we create a feed, post a signed message to it, then create a stream
that reads from the feed.

Concepts

Building upon ssb-db requires understanding a few concepts that it uses to
ensure the unforgeability of message feeds.

Identities

An identity is simply a public/private key pair.

Even though there is no worldwide store of identities, it's infeasible
for anyone to forge your identity. Identities are binary strings, so not
particularly human-readable.

Feeds

A feed is an append-only sequence of messages. Each feed is associated
1:1 with an identity. The feed is identified by its public key. This
works because public keys are unique.

Since feeds are append-only, replication is simple: request all messages
in the feed that are newer than the latest message you know about.

Note that append-only really means append-only: you cannot delete an
existing message. If you want to enable entities to be deleted or
modified in your data model, that can be implemented in a layer on top
of ssb-db using
delta encoding.

Messages

Each message contains:

A message object. This is the thing that the end user cares about. If
there is no encryption, this is a {} object. If there is encryption,
this is an encrypted string.

A content-hash of the previous message. This prevents somebody with
the private key from changing the feed history after publishing, as a
newly-created message wouldn't match the "prev-hash" of later messages
which were already replicated.

The signing public key.

A signature. This prevents malicious parties from writing fake
messages to a stream.

A sequence number. This prevents a malicious party from making a copy
of the feed that omits or reorders messages.

Since each message contains a reference to the previous message, a feed
must be replicated in order, starting with the first message. This is
the only way that the feed can be verified. A feed can be viewed in
any order after it's been replicated.

Object ids

The text inside a message can refer to three types of ssb-db
entities: messages, feeds, and blobs (i.e. attachments). Messages and
blobs are referred to by their hashes, but a feed is referred to by its
signing public key. Thus, a message within a feed can refer to another
feed, or to a particular point within a feed.

Object ids begin with a sigil @% and & for a feedId, msgId
and blobId respectively.

Note that ssb-db does not include facilities for retrieving a blob given the
hash.

Replication

It is possible to easily replicate data between two instances of ssb-db.
First, they exchange maps of their newest data. Then, each one downloads
all data newer than its newest data.

Scuttlebot is a tool that
makes it easy to replicate multiple instances of ssb-db using a
decentralized network.

Security properties

ssb-db maintains useful security properties even when it is
connected to a malicious ssb-db database. This makes it ideal
as a store for peer-to-peer applications.

Imagine that we want to read from a feed for which we know the identity,
but we're connected to a malicious ssb-db instance. As long as the malicious
database does not have the private key:

The malicious database cannot create a new feed with the same identifier

The malicious database cannot write new fake messages to the feed

The malicious database cannot reorder the messages in the feed

The malicious database cannot send us a new copy of the feed that omits
messages from the middle

The malicious database can refuse to send us the feed, or only send
us the first N messages in the feed

Messages may optionally be encrypted. See test/end-to-end.js.

API

ssb = require('ssb-db/create')(path)

Create an ssb-db database at the given path, returns an instance.

require('ssb-db')(db, opts)

Pass in a levelup instance
(it must have sublevel installed),
and an options object. The options object provides the crypto
and encoding functions, that are not directly tied into how
ssb-db works.

The following methods all apply to a ssb-db instance

SSBdb#createFeed (keys?)

Create a Feed object. A feed is a chain of messages signed
by a single key (the identity of the feed).
This handles the state needed to append valid messages to a feed.
If keys are not provided, then a new key pair will be generated.

The following methods apply to the Feed type.

Feed#add (message, cb)

Adds a message of a given type to a feed.
This is the recommended way to append messages.
message is a javascript object. It must be a {} object with a type
property that is a string between 3 and 32 chars long.

If message has recps property which is an array of feed ids, then the message
content will be encrypted using private-box to
those recipients. Any invalid recipients will cause an error, instead of accidentially posting
a message publically or without a recipient.

Feed#id

the id of the feed (which is the feed's public key)

Feed#keys

the key pair for this feed.

ssbDb#createFeedStream (opts) -> PullSource

Create a pull-stream
of all the feeds in the database, ordered by timestamps.
All pull-level options
are allowed (start, end, reverse, tail)

ssbDb#createLogStream({gt: ts, tail: boolean}) -> PullSource

create a stream of the messages that have been written to this instance
in the order they arrived. This is mainly intended for building views.
The objects in this stream will be of the form:

Create a stream of the history of id. If seq > 0, then
only stream messages with sequence numbers greater than seq.
if live is true, the stream will be a
live mode

ssbDb#messagesByType ({type: string, live: bool?}) -> PullSource

retrieve messages with a given type. All messages must have a type,
so this is a good way to select messages that an application might use.
Returns a source pull-stream. This function takes all the options from pull-level#read
(gt, lt, gte, lte, limit, reverse, live)

dest (string, optional): An id or filter, specifying where the link should point to.
To filter, just use the sigil of the type you want: @ for feeds, % for messages, and & for blobs.

rel (string, optional): Filters the links by the relation string.

If opts.values is set (default: false) value will be the message the link occurs in.
If opts.keys is set (default: true) key will be the message id.
If opts.meta is unset (default: true) source, hash, rel will be left off.

Note: if source, and dest is provided, but not rel, ssb will
have to scan all the links from source, and then filter by dest.
your query will be more efficient if you also provide rel.

ssbDb#addMap (fn)

Add a map function to be applied to all messages on read. The fn function
is should expect (msg, cb), and must eventually call cb(err, msg) to finish.

These modifications only change the value being read, but the underlying data is
never modified. If multiple map functions are added, they are called serially and
the msg output by one map function is passed as the input msg to the next.

Additional properties may only be added to msg.value.meta, and modifications
may only be made after the original value is saved in msg.value.meta.original.